Friday, July 28, 2017

It seemed like a good idea. I run a Facebook page with over 400,000 followers, and selling a few t-shirts to make a few bucks seemed like a good thing to do. We ran a few campaigns, we sold a few t-shirts--everything seemed fine.

Our fans got their t-shirts, TeeSpring made the money, but they never paid us. Their payouts page says "payouts can take up to 4 days to process".

When I requested the payout, their system sent me an email:

There's a little "contact support" link in the payout message, so after a week passed by, I clicked on the link and got the screen below, saying the payment support page had been moved to provide better service, with a link to the generic contact form, which gives a long list of reasons why you're contacting support, and they all look like they are geared towards the buyers, and not the sellers.

So, I used the generic contact form to describe my problem. They replied that they were upgrading their computer systems, and that it would take a couple more days, and to try back then if I still hadn't received the payment. I tried this a couple more times, each time waiting a few days, as instructed. The reply email gave a seller support email, so after a few times of using the general support form, I started emailing them directly.

Thus far I've received a few variations on "we are working on this site wide problem" which they have been working on for a month.

Even though I took my campaigns down, they continued to sell my t-shirts, and so I continued to request more payouts. I'm now up to 4 unpaid payouts, and it's safe to say I won't be using TeeSpring any more. I think TeeSpring is an awful company.

*** Update 8/1/2017 ***

They paid 2 of the smaller payouts a few days ago. So, I waited a few days to see if they were going to pay the bigger one (and the other, smaller one), and ... nothing. I replied to one of the payout emails and got this back.

They couldn't just look that up on their computer system? I replied with the payout numbers and amounts, but didn't receive a reply after a day.

So ... I tried their live chat, with no better luck.

They didn't respond to the last comment, though it says "seen." It doesn't seem like I'm even dealing with a real company...

*** Update 8/1/2017 ***

TeeSpring finally got us the last two payouts, after a month of telling me they'd provide an update once it is available. Our first test run with TeeSpring did pretty with sales, but I don't thin it was ultimately worth the hassle. We know a couple other Facebook page owners who have experienced similar problems with TeeSpring, so we're going to stay with SunFrog for now.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Legitimate sites serving up malware is nothing new. Some of the ad networks the big sites use don't scrutinize ads like they should, because money. They make lots and lots of money from ads, and sometimes these ads are malicious, like the ones I was getting from IMDB for a while.

What I've been seeing a lot of lately is the "Urgent Chrome Update" where an ad on a site redirects the browser to something that looks very important for the user to click on.

This one came from an article linked on George Takei's Facebook page on distractify.com, which redirected me to this page, after sitting open in my browser for about 10 minutes.